“I’m just a little happy,” says Akari, smiling benignly at her new apprentice. It’s an echo of a line cited years before by Alicia, back when Akari was a new arrival on Mars. When Alicia said it, it was a lie: she was more than a little happy. She was nervous, she was excited, she was worried, she was thrilled; the prospect of handling Akari was the biggest challenge Alicia had ever faced and she was unsure how to go about it. She would remain uncertain in her methods throughout Akari’s training, finally crying at her retirement ceremony at the sight of Akari accepting her oar. What she saw in that moment of serenity was more than Akari’s gratitude: it was gratification.

I succeeded, she thought, I met my biggest challenge and I succeeded.

Alicia retires happily, and Akari takes up all the tasks her mentor left her. The task of opening the shade and welcoming a new day. The task of becoming the number-one gondolier in New Venice. The task of pleasing customers while gently sculling across a town composed entirely of smiles (what’s behind them? Cats?). The task of training a successor to the Aria Company.

The task of lying.

“I’m just a little happy,” says Akari, and, just as it was when Alicia said it, it’s a lie. It’s not a lie for the same reason, however. It’s a lie because Akari is more than a little happy.

She’s very happy, and she deserves it.

You’ve flown too far from the Sun; let me take you back to Earth.

It’s a dark world. Pollution has permeated the mantle. Rivers flow slow and purple with sludge. Domed cities like those the Avenger creators thought might dominate Mars instead form the mainstays of civilization on what the Martians call ‘Manhome.’ Earth isn’t truly home to anything, anymore. It’s a husk on life support, a test-case for the technologies that enabled the terraforming of Mars, and also a reason why the terraforming of Mars was so necessary. A fake sky akin to that of a Macross is all that an Earth girl knows.

She grows up with picture books, though the pictures are drawn from pictures from pictures. No one remembers a cat. No one remembers a dog.

A girl knows only a few things: that her parents are at work, that she must do her best in school in order to go to work someday, and that she can never leave her domed Tokyo save for the occasional luxury vacation to Mars. One day, her fourth-grade class takes a field trip to Kyoto. The students obediently pile into a train with no windows and the train chugs silently along a desolate landscape of blurry green and brown hues. The train arrives. The students flood out onto the streets of another dome. A few remnants of 21st-century Kyoto impress the young ones, but mostly the city is the same as their native Tokyo. A girl yawns; she sees the same fake sky. She’s seen more realistic skies in holographic form: travel brochures for various cities on Mars.

New San Francisco.

Newer Orleans.

New Venice.

Tokyo 4-C meets with Kyoto 4-C. Students exchange formal greetings. Teachers and chaperones aren’t too concerned about friendship; this is a leftover tradition, in any case, and the students are unlikely to see each other ever again. Nevertheless they encourage interaction. This is your chance to meet another culture.

“We’re all Japanese,” whines one kid.

“Your parents are backward.” The teacher is blunt. “Every dome is its own community.”

The students nod in obeisance.

There is no sense of solidarity among the students. There is nothing but an awkward agreement that fourth grade is irrelevant later in life. A girl is disinterested. She doesn’t talk. But maybe she looked kinda cute, or maybe he didn’t have any friends among his own peers… a boy addresses her.

“Um…”

“Eh?”

“Hi, I’m … … nice to meet you.”

“I’m Mizunashi Akari; nice to meet you.”

She has little to say but he’s persistent. Eventually he mentions family…

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No.”

“I do! I have an older sister. She works in New Venice as a gondolier.”

“Eh?”

A girl blinks. Work, in New Venice? New Venice was on Mars. You go to Mars to work? A girl returns from her field trip, sees her father that night. Work on Mars, she asks? He laughs dismissively. Mars is a slow place for the dregs of society. True hard workers remain on Earth. They don’t escape to a paradise of idiots. They stick together and try to make the most out of what they’re given.

Daddy, Mars is out there for a reason right? It was given to us.

No, he responds, we stole it.

A girl doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t bring it up again. She has an e-mail address, though, so she contacts the boy in Kyoto. They become pen pals, exchanging letters once or twice a week.

Both boy and girl grew and changed over the years. He succeeded in school, getting good grades, heading toward a career that would suck up most of his time. She faltered in school, barely keeping up when she did and failing to frequently. The fast pace of the Tokyo dome was too much for her. She wanted to stop and enjoy things — not that there was much to enjoy.

She would e-mail her pen pal, “how is your sister doing?”

She dreamed of New Venice. She dreamed of water that didn’t sting, of an atmosphere she could breathe. A city that would be more of a home than the steel-plated womb of Tokyo.

“Slacking off,” her pen pal would respond, often with a derisive emoticon or two.

“Sounds nice,” she’d muse.

“Hardly. Stay focused.”

The year she turns fourteen, the big decision comes. Is she going to try for high school, and advance her education from there? She’s barely surviving already in the strenuous middle school environment. Her father has worked himself to death in a water treatment facility. Her mother works twice as hard now, and is never home: she sleeps at work and sends her paychecks to Akari, who buys her own food and sets her own hours.

Akari doesn’t want to stay in Tokyo.

Tokyo is sad, for her: her father died here. Her classmates ridiculed her performance here. Her mother is somewhere here, but never here here. She wants to get away. She considers Kyoto: she could visit her pen pal. Maybe they could work something better out for both of them. But she knows she’ll just get in his way. Cornered by an incompatibility with an Earth lifestyle and a lack of friends, with nothing but the Tokyo International Spaceport behind her, she turns and looks upward.

For the first time, she sees more than pixelated clouds and an inauthentic glossy sky. She sees far beyond, thousands of kilometers into the deep black, and she sees freedom.

“Hey, do you have any info on the gondola market?” A frantic e-mail to her pen pal.

“Umm… I can ask my bum sister, I guess.”

“Please.”

“She says there are always new openings at some company or another for apprentices. I’ve attached a few flyers that my sister sent. She also says, ‘I hope Akari-chan can visit me in New Venice!’”

A girl examines the glamorous hiring materials. The top three companies seem to be Himeya, Orange Planet, and Aria. Akari likes the blues and whites on the Aria material, and the oddly-shaped animal that the stunning blonde gondolier is holding. Is that a dog or a cat?

She decides to apply. She has nothing else. She doesn’t even tell her mother: her pen pal and his sister feel more like family to her at this point. She downloads the training software — there are no canals or gondolas left on Earth — and she prepares for her trip to Mars.

It’s a gamble.

It’s a chance at salvation from the cruel pace of a dying planet.

She gazes off into space, lost in a holographic representation of New Venice. She’s fifteen now, and this spring she departs for her ‘paradise of idiots.’ She’s thrilled by the prospects. Living without cars, without machines. Folding her own laundry. Preparing her own food. Breathing clean air. Touching grass, and water. Cloud-gazing. She could gain everything…

… but if she failed, she’d be penniless, alone, an orphan not only in another city but on another planet entirely.

She wishes desperately for happiness.

She cries at the possibility thereof.

She’s nervous, excited, worried, thrilled. The prospect of apprenticing herself to Alicia is the biggest challenge she has ever faced with all her heart, and she is unsure how to go about it. She practices her smile in the mirror, and laughs at herself. I… I hope this works out.

Things rarely go as planned.

As if by some fairy magic, Mars opens its heart to Akari.

Years later, Alicia has retired and Akari is the sole member of the Aria Company. She examines the applications, flipping through them until she comes across a young girl from Earth. She smiles at the girl’s photo: uncertain smile, messy hair. Cute eyes. The application screams “hesitant.” That’s all Akari needs.

“I’d like to offer you a position … ”

She gets off the phone, blinking back joy.

A couple weeks later, the first morning with her new apprentice.

“Why are you staring at me?” asks the girl, not sure if she is supposed to begin eating.

“I’m just a little happy,” says Akari, smiling benignly.

Day 8

Day 8 was Friday, the last day of my internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. We were crammed into an auditorium all day, watching each other give boring talks about our work. I was hella nervous for the first hour or so (I’m not so comfortable with public speaking) and then I had my turn and then I was just uncomfortable. I’m too large for the auditorium seats; it’s like being in airplane where there’s no leg room, etc. I found myself unhappy with the situation. I couldn’t find anything wonderful to think about it. After work was over, I got my paycheck (woot, tons of money) and then cleaned out my cubicle (sniff).

Went home, changed, finished packing, caught a train to the San Francisco airport. It was time to make my first trip on my own—my trip to Otakon 2008.

My airport experience was fairly wonderful, surprisingly. See: I have to travel with artificial blood protein due to my hemophilia, and that stuff can’t go through the scanners. <abbr title=”fucking bastards”>TSA</abbr> is great at molesting/raping people with special needs in security. I have some beef with them. BUT this time stuff was fairly painless. In fact, my passport (which I was using as my ID) proved more of a problem; the photo’s from about nine years ago and doesn’t look like me at all.

I sit around a bit, loaded down with Clif Bars (my mom thought I might starve/my plans with Pip might fall through due to him being an internet weirdo and she gave me a hefty supply of rations *rollseyes*)
, waiting for my plane. It comes, I get on it, and off I head for Charlotte.

On the plane, I offer Starbursts to my seat neighbors. They decline to partake. Phooey.

Day 9

We land in Charlotte without trouble—a little early, in fact—and I wait around for two hours for my connection to Baltimore. I talk to some nice folks in the gate who were even more sleep-deprived than I. I can’t sleep on planes due to extreme discomfort; these people had had a flight canceled and had been in the airport waiting for far longer than I’d been in my plane.

Eventually we leave Charlotte. I offer a Starburst to my neighbor and he graciously accepts, twice!

Get into Baltimore, meet Pip, and whoa, whoa, suddenly it’s real, it’s happening—the crazy idea of flying to Baltimore for one weekend just for Otakon, I’m there, I’m talking to Pip!

Some un-wonderful things come to light: Erica Friedman has run a yuri panel, and at it, she dubbed Aria yuri. Otakon has too many people and too many lines. Omo failed to get an aniblogging panel through. Os is a Hirano Aya fanboy that will always irk me. Etc.

A lot of the weekend was a blur. I had so much fun just being around the people I met—
Pip, Os, Pip’s sister, Os’s friends, Baka-Raptor, TheBigN, Moy, Omo, Wildarmsheero, Link, maybe more I’m missing here…

My behavior most of the con was fairly not-Mizunashi. But I don’t think that made it un-wonderful. I think that it would have been extremely lame if I had refused to have fun and let go around my friends, if I hadn’t made jokes about trashing Friedman’s booth, if I hadn’t recorded a podcast with Pip, if I hadn’t spouted anti-Hirano shit constantly. I mean, this is me. This is who the people I was with knew. We all had a great time and I don’t think I made anyone feel uncomfortable.

Actually, I might have upset Baka-Raptor by being too wonderful once or twice.

But yeah. It was wonderful.

Other anime bloggers have done a better job covering what actually happened at the con better than I could. Yeah.

Since the con is covered and this is an anime blog blog, allow me to instead say some things about some of the guys I met:

Never get into Os’s car. He is the Yukari-sensei to my Chiyo-chan.
Pip doesn’t actually want to put his penis in my butt.
Baka-Raptor was really quiet the first few hours. Then he started singing anime songs in response to questions and comments. That was badass. Maybe he was just shy ;)
Os is really nice and gregarious. It’s kind of scary.
Baka-Raptor tells the saddest stories; he reduced me to tears three times in two days.

At about eleven, Pip and Os and I returned to our hotel room, where we dined on Clif Bars and recorded a podcast. Pip showed his underaged sister porn. We lol’d. Eventually I fell asleep in Os’s arms.

Day 10

Woke up Sunday sad because Pip was leaving. It was a short dream, but it was fun. We bid our farewells and then Os and I hit up AMVs. After some time of that, we ran into Baka-Raptor again and took to the dealer’s room. Baka-Raptor and I returned to the AMV room after a while where we laughed and discussed ideas for Maid Guy and ef AMVs. Mmm.

After failing to get our hands on swords, Baka-Raptor and I reconvened with Os and we got lunch. I cried into my tuna sandwich.

Baka-Raptor, I am never eating a meal with you again!

At three, the entire thing was over. Os drove me to BWI and I waited around for hours for my fight. Caught two planes back—getting lost in the Las Vegas airport due to gate changes—and then spent the night at my bro’s place in San Bruno. Again, I offered Starbursts to my neighbors and again one declined while one accepted. Things were pretty suteki, I guess.

I don’t know.

There’s so much to talk about. It was really sad saying good-bye to Pip and Os. I wish I could have spent more time with them. I guess there’s always next year, though. I’m definitely burning a the time and money again. It was so worth it.

I didn’t take many photos. In fact, I only have one—of Os, and Pip, and Pip’s sister, and Os’s friend, at a table at a grill where we ate burgers and cheesecake. I’m feeling a little selfish so I wanna keep that pic to myself for now.

From the beginning, Mizunashi Mode was never “let’s pretend we’re little girls on Mars.” The point wasn’t to be Mizunashi Akari, but to examine human interaction. I discovered that there are still people out there who like graciousness and kindness and reciprocate wonderful gestures. Smiling evokes smiles. Peace and calm can be obtained. There are things out there that ruin wonderful mode, like Hirano Aya and my hatred for her, and you know, all the strife and shit in our world, but the idea of being kind for its own sake and making others happy is a good one.

I’m ending my time with Mizunashi Mode prematurely because I’ve found what I wanted to find. I’m still going to abide by some of the rules of the experiment because they’re good rules for living. Be wonderful.

I’m not going to write any more reports, though, unless something groundbreaking occurs—and if such a thing should happen, I wouldn’t need an “experiment” premise in which to discuss it in this blog. So yeah. No more updates, but I’ll still be examining the world while attempting to be kind to others.

It’s been great and it will continue to be great as I hone my suteki powers.

Expect a return to trolling and meta-anibloggery some time this weekend.

I was talking to Pip and Os excitedly about how wonderful this weekend will be (going to Otakon, meeting anibloggers, etc.) and then Pip tells me that Sasa wants him to put his penis in my butt. Shortly thereafter he tells me that Os wants him to do it, too. Next he says he wants to. Finishing blow? He tells me that I want him to.

That was awkward and I felt kinda :S

I’ll report if anything major comes up, but it seems as though for now, I’m doing fine and I’m planning to keep it that way
you can call me if you have something to say
and i’ll tell you that i think it’s a little fucked up.

Any comments from anyone else trying this experiment? I know icystorm hasn’t updated his adventures at all.

So yeah… I’d say Day 3 was a failure. In the future, I’ll try to use my spare weekend days to take long walks and enjoy the beauty of my town. That, or if I absolutely need to stay home, I’ll try to use my time on more creative pursuits.

A day is a lot to waste, since we have limited time.

(Mon)Day 4 was quite a bit better. Was back at work. Saw lots of folks, some I knew and some I didn’t, and smiled and received smiles. Enjoyed a cantaloupe possibly more than I should have but it made me so happy! :) Got some good stuff done at work, etc.

There was one super un-wonderful thing that occurred on Day 4, though.

I had lunch with my dad. A bit of background: he’s either insane or I’m a really shitty person, but in the last two weeks he’s flown completely off the handle and assaulted me verbally for being the shittiest person he knows, etc. etc. How he does everything for me and I never thank him and always expect more, and so on. Kinda weird since I always thank him for everything and never expect anything (well, aside from rage, now). ANYWAY. He works at the same lab as I do, so we sometimes go to the cafeteria together, which always used to be fun. Day 4, though, he seems to have completely forgotten how he “officially” expelled me from his apartment the previous Thursday (one day before Mizunashi Mode commenced) and is all cordial and stuff.

I accept his invitation because I have no excuse not to…

But it’s not fun at all. All I can think of is how scared I am of him yelling at me again. That wasn’t wonderful. I was just terrified the whole time. I… I don’t think that’s a failing of Mizunashi Mode… but I guess you guys can be the judge of that. Overall, I strive not to upset people. I strive to not upset people.

But uh, maybe I’m a shitty person and in the wrong, and I need to apologize to my father—not sure what for, though.

Anyway. Day 5 is shaping up well, will update later.

How do I reconcile that with my attempt at sutekiiiiiiiii~~~~~?

There’s the obvious Michael route (srs bsns) but that is also counter to Mizunashi Mode. Whether it’s slamming bad shows for being bad or revealing that I actually do, in fact, like Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (no lie—that wouldn’t be wonderful), a serious and well-thought-out post inherently asks for challengers, and starting internet debates isn’t something I want to be doing right now.

I could continue to troll, claiming that it’s all playful and that it’s a wonderful point of myself, but that wouldn’t fly so well. My brand of trolling is highly inflammatory and profanity-ridden. Not too nice.

It seems as though all I can do in Mizunashi Mode is write about Mizunashi Mode. I’m also laying off the whole pirating thing for a bit. It’s kinda un-suteki, as noted by icystorm. I’m still writing (dotq.org) but aniblogging’s going to stay dry for a bit, unless you guys have some marvelous suggestions.

Finally a brief note: <3 to everyone who’s trying out their own versions of the experiment.

Spent the day with my bro and a few friends (same bro and overlapping friend with games from Friday), birthday party for one of them. Did tennis, pizza, games. It was great to be together with all those wonderful people I see so rarely.

There was little outside interaction, though we got along really well with our waiter.

I felt a bit frustrated when we played SSBB and I was total shit at it, but that was mostly a sort of “awww, why do I suck so much” kind of frustration. Yeah, great day.

Just kidding ;) I’ve always wanted to try saying that once.

Today was… less different from most days than I had expected it to be. I was just more conscious of my actions. I found myself thinking things like, “hey, in this situations, I should…” and then realizing “hey, that’s what I would normally do!” It seems I’ve already incorporated a lot of Akari’s teachings into my everyday life, so this experiment isn’t a huge shift for me behavior-wise.

It was interesting, however, to explore how my style of interacting affected those around me.

I think I made people smile today. Maybe I do every day. I was aware of it today. It was kind of overwhelming @_@

Oh, and Sasa was right: money and sex. I had to do some un-wonderful things today like negotiating wages for my job for the next five months. Maybe it’s not inherently un-wonderful but I just feel so awkward and nasty when I’m asking people a price. So yeah, that wasn’t great. On the other hand it’s pretty wonderful that these people want me to work for them, and they’re so nice and lively. It’s a great work environment at the LBL communications department, and I’d be honored to be able to continue there for another five months.

You know. So long as I make enough money. Real world. Out there. Etc.

Most of today I wasn’t in direct contact with people (cubicle job does that to ya) but when I saw people (bus drivers, other lab employees in hallways and elevators and cafeteria), I did my best to greet them cheerfully. Actually, this one guy saw me from a few yards away and greeted me, first! It’s amazing what keeping my head up does. I’m used to looking at the ground. Bad habit from middle school and 9-10th grades, I guess. When you look up at people and face them, interaction occurs. This guy smiled and said hi. I responded in kind. It was pretty wonderful.

After work, I went over to a friend’s place with one of my older brothers. We played a board game and there was some of the usual playful trash-talk. I suppose that that wasn’t so wonderful if one were to examine the words alone, but it was pretty great overall—we don’t get together so often, we had a lot of fun, we were intimate and lively.

Oh! And after lunch in the lab cafeteria I accompanied some of my darling kouhai to a food court just beneath the lab where a couple of them got cheap and tasty food. That was a good excuse to get away from my cubicle and enjoy the weather! The sky was very blue and crisp and it was warm out, perfect for enjoying the Berkeley flora.

Things I could have done better today:
- more public transportation
- less consideration of money

I think overall I did well. I was smiling genuinely most of the day (wow, I catch it from myself and can’t stop) and I made about twenty “sutekiiiii” comments to myself. I don’t think I upset anyone and I had a fantastic time with some great folks. I’m looking forward to how the rest of this month turns out.

The idea is this: for one month (through August 31st), I will attempt to use what “wonderful power” I might have and act like a better human being. The premise is clear; our world is one that simply is not wonderful. There is war, there is disease, there are issues of resource control and discrimination, there is religious conflict, etc. In this world that is not the heaven of Neo-Venezia, is it possible to be the kind and loving human being that Mizunashi Akari is?

She's wishing for your happiness.

My hypothesis is no.

But one of the interesting things here will be seeing what triggers cause me to stop being wonderful. What in my life can pierce a shell of wonderfulness and irritate me? What can make me want to yell, or lie, or hurt others?

And then: why do those triggers exist? Can anything be done about them? What if more people tried this experiment? What if people in general were simply more courteous and kind and loving?

In order to attain answers to these questions, and in order to brighten our own lives and those of the people who surround us, icystorm and I are beginning this experiment. We would like to invite (everyone) to join in. We have some guidelines on how to proceed, but you don’t need to follow them—simply being kind to those around you is a wonderful first step, and if our experiment inspires you to try that, that’s already amazingly good.

Here are our guidelines:

1. document un-wonderful behavior
If, during this experiment, you do something that irritates someone else or yourself, record it in a blog post (I’ll be doing daily updates when possible). If applicable, investigate why your behavior was abrasive, and how you might act differently in the future.

2. document close calls
If, during this experiment, you think negative thoughts or catch yourself right before yelling at someone etc., record it in a blog post. If applicable, investigate why you were upset, and how you might avoid becoming such in the future.

3. don’t give up if you do something mean or un-wonderful
This experiment is not a competition. The point isn’t to see how far you can get. The point is to be the best you can. If you do something un-wonderful, record it a la Guideline #1, and attempt to avoid it in the future. You’re still “in the game”—one failure is not a reason to give up on kindness.

4. avoid debates and arguments
Even the most civil arguments are, at their cores, conflicts. While these are unavoidable from time to time, you don’t really need to butt into that one “most moe character of summer 2008″ forum thread, do you? Avoid conflict where you can. Having strong opinions is one thing and expressing them is another; only do the latter if it won’t bug others.

5. greet people
If you walk by someone on a sidewalk, smile and say hi. Greeting others is a basic courtesy that few practice these days. By acknowledging others’ existences and importances in your own life, you make yourself more important to them. This is how Akari makes her friends (see: Episode 10 of the Natural). If you smile at someone, they might not smile back—but they might smile at someone else later, or at you if you ever see them again.

6. make wonderful observations
A minimum of once per day, note that something is wonderful or lovely. This can be a thought to yourself or a remark to someone nearby. “The world is wonderful in the eyes of wonderful people,” says Alicia (Aria the Animation, Episode 6).

We considered more guidelines, but they either fall under #1-2 or are just plain silly.

If you’d like to participate in this experiment, following all guidelines, consider making a similar Day 0 post on your blog. Inform your readers of your goals and encourage others to do the same. We’re not trying to start a movement or a revolution—we just want to try being nice and see where it gets us.